Human Resources Committee on Dec. 3rd, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Chief Leon.

Thank you, Mr. Vis.

Next is Mr. Vaughan, please, for five minutes.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

Thank you very much.

To Susan McGee, I have a quick question about provincial health systems and whether or not additional.... When you talk about supportive housing and housing people with high needs or high acuity, how have funds from the provincial level flowed, in terms of harm reduction, in terms of psychiatric and mental health support and in terms of addiction issues? Is the provincial core of that strong enough to support an indigenous-led housing program?

[Susan McGee]

We have some really good examples of projects that I think, quite frankly, are internationally recognized, including Ambrose Place, which I know you're familiar with. At the same time, to scale these—when we're talking about the dedicated resources in advance that we would need to support the many projects that we would have to do to really meet this need—there isn't currently a commitment to scale alongside the capital that we hope to roll out. It's a real challenge.

I have been impressed. When we have the opportunity to bring in Alberta Health Services to our projects, they do see the population we are serving as their clients once we can get them housed. I think that is a really important part of how we frame and set up the project models we're working on.

It's on a project-by-project basis. It is something that continually needs to be shepherded. It isn't really, again, solidified within our program models, and so every program is new.

That has been a challenge in supporting and clarifying harm reduction, I think, for a relatively new audience. Some people hear “harm reduction”, and they don't fully understand that it does still continue to support individuals on a recovery journey. We're working on that.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

If the study produces the results we all want it to, and an indigenous urban housing program is self-directed, self-standing, and is funded appropriately, would the work with indigenous people still need to overlap in order to make sure there were no cracks for people to fall between?

[Susan McGee]

Overlap, yes, but integration among aligned goals and strategies can create huge possibilities. We do spend a lot of time trying to negotiate little micro arrangements. The alignment and integration approach needs to be a higher level expectation. They absolutely need to work together at a very minimum.

When we demonstrate the successes, not just in our community, but across Canada, there has been exceptional work done. We need to share that and build confidence that we can do that and more.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

To Mr. Lawson-Swain, with regard to the vision you enunciated, one of the challenges in getting this done is managing the development dollars, so that they become self-fulfilling. Would you see a role for financing, not just supportive housing and deeply affordable housing, but also just housing? There's a significant number of indigenous people who are affluent. They make a living, and do good work in the community. Would you also see a role for building indigenous-led market housing, indigenous-led housing developments, to allow people who succeed to also live within the community?

[Marcel Lawson-Swain]

Absolutely. We're currently at this point in time building a project in Vancouver that is exactly that. We're using the private market for financing. We're using CMHC to create housing options from shelters all the way up to home ownership in one complex. It's important for us to recognize that when we build housing projects, we build communities. We're not just building one-off units. For many of the people who are out there buying and can afford to buy market or affordable market housing units, they also want to be part of our community.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

In fact, their investment could roll back into the provision of other housing for people without needs.

[Marcel Lawson-Swain]

Absolutely, and it's a way for those who are more affluent to have an opportunity to support, with the revenues they're producing from their rents or mortgages, the overall building and structures, so we can support those with lesser incomes.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

I've got one last question. There is a requirement around only financing residential components within CMHC programs. They don't do, for example, community health, ceremony space, study space, what have you.

With an indigenous-led program, would you see a need for greater flexibility for communal space as part of housing programs to deal with some of these non-traditional spaces or non-traditional requirements to support people through your housing?

[Marcel Lawson-Swain]

Absolutely, and we have a good example of that in Vancouver in one of our projects called the Vancouver Aboriginal Children's Village. In that project, we built a cultural space on the main floor. We built offices that support the tenants and the occupants, who are in the building for support services, and they should be part and parcel of one another.

In B.C., the provincial government looks at that and says the commercial piece of the building cannot be more than 33% of the overall building structure. We have to then find the financing to support the commercial part of that, and that often makes it very difficult for us to complete these projects.

We used our own equity, by the way, that we acquired throughout the years to create the necessary funding to fund the commercial piece to the building as we moved forward, but that, generally, was not provided by CMHC or the provinces.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Spadina—Fort York, ON]

Enabling legislation would have to give you that flexibility, is that correct?

[Marcel Lawson-Swain]

Absolutely.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you very much, Mr. Vaughan, and Mr. Lawson-Swain.

We're going to go back to Mr. Kent for five minutes.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

It has been a very interesting and informative session tonight.

We've been talking about the fact that big-dollar ambition and big-dollar programs face the shrinkage of bureaucracy and other levels of government and sometimes...very small or greatly diminished outcomes. We know that the rapid housing initiative by itself is $1 billion to be disbursed, ideally, in six months, with 3,000 units built within a year and part of that going to indigenous housing in urban and rural situations. If that were to be rolled out continuously—twice a year at $2 billion for 6,000 units—over ten years it would still fall far short of the indigenous housing objective of 73,000 units and $25 billion investment.

I'll come to you, Mr. Lawson-Swain and your background with CMHC. With regard to indigenous housing, would you rather see.... Perhaps a $25-billion upfront commitment from the federal government is an unrealistic expectation. Would you like to see that $25 billion delivered again to, if not a CMHC-like organization, but an indigenous-led national organization, which would itself disburse that $25 billion?

[Marcel Lawson-Swain]

The short answer is yes. We definitely would enjoy that opportunity. We have a good example of what can happen. The indigenous housing or the Indigenous Homes Innovation Initiative that was created by one of your ministers in the Liberal government was an example of an opportunity for first nations, Métis, Inuit and the urban community to come together and work together. We demonstrated that we had the capacity and the ability to deliver money. It's that kind of creativity and that kind of confidence that we have to have in our indigenous communities, so that we can deliver those dollars to ourselves and do it not only more rapidly, but better.

I can give you an example. On the Reaching Home side of the funding we allocate, because we allocate funding for 26 different municipalities here in the GVRD for both native and non-native, we have two different CABs. We have a non-indigenous CAB and an indigenous CAB. The indigenous CAB delivers their money in record time, all the time. They set their own priorities and have it out the door as quickly as possible.

On the non-indigenous side, it takes very long for them to come to conclusions and make decisions because they're not acting as a unified voice as a community. That's something that we do.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

In the brief time left, I have a question for Ms. McGee.

Recognizing the difference between the aspiration of new units being built, your “no wrong door” approach is an interesting one in terms of ensuring that, by the three levels—the names list, the coordinated list and the match list—you identify the greatest need and equitable distribution of what's available.

Could you explain that a little bit?

[Susan McGee]

All of the orders of government—and within orders of government there are different contracts that we administer—and our partners have very complementary, but unique outcomes expected, timelines, when money needs to be spent and the qualifications around it.

That's the role we play in the middle, to really maximize that for our community. Everything comes in and then we prioritize to make sure that we most efficiently put all of the resources...and recognize that being able to do that, we can balance the fact that some things do get held up or some things happen faster than planned. We're able to do that.

That's our approach as the entity in our community. It's not that every community needs to respond in the same way, but it has certainly served us well in that we've never slipped money as a community. We've been able to leverage considerable buy-in, not just in terms of real money coming through the organization, but influence, in the way that we're able to work with others on this rather complex issue.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

It's not just the provincial government, but the municipal government in the case of a large city like Edmonton.

[Susan McGee]

That's correct.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Mr. Kent.

Thank you, Ms. McGee.

Next is Mr. Turnbull for five minutes.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thanks. It's nice to have another round, because I did have a few more questions.

Mr. Lawson-Swain, you mentioned in your previous remarks Impact Canada and the indigenous homes innovation initiative. I think you might be on the steering committee for that, which is great. My understanding is that 24 innovators were selected from a very large number of applicants. Can you tell us a little about that work and how it might impact the way forward?

[Marcel Lawson-Swain]

I think it's important to recognize that when we were all coming together across the country and representing different regions, we had to clear the room from politics and had to recognize that we had a specific goal in mind. That goal was to get housing dollars out, or innovation dollars out, to as many innovators as we could across the country. From our perspective, we were looking at this as a status-blind approach. It didn't matter to us if we were first nations, indigenous, Métis or Inuit or urban, although we did recognize the importance of each of our roles in that room.

We quickly came to a consensus model before we started any work, and we utilized elders and traditional teachings to get us to that point. Once we got there and got over the hurdles of doing away with the politics of how we're going to allocate funding, the rest of the process was fairly simple. We acted in good faith with on another. We used our traditional beliefs. We acknowledged one another and we selected leaders among that council.

That's a very good model to look at. It's an opportunity to assess something different. That's in addition to the model we currently use through the Reaching Home program for community advisory boards to have input. I think those are two really good models to look at.

Also, again, coming back to section 56.1 of the National Housing Act, that piece of legislation still exists; it's never been repealed. It's something that we could utilize to help create this process moving forward.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

That's great. Building on that, something else I've wondered about is that in different places and documents I've been reading, I've noticed multiple references to indigenous-led businesses, to some of them being community-based or social enterprises. I wondered if innovation in the housing space might include benefits for indigenous communities beyond just the creation of the housing, but also design, management, construction and construction projects. Many different aspects to building housing could benefit the economies of indigenous people.

Would you agree with that? Do you see those opportunities? Could you outline any of those for me?